When the magazine began in 1988, only a handful of Asian directors were familiar names in the world film circles or even, ironically, in film circles within Asia. But that was precisely the time when Asian cinema, notwithstanding the several masters it gave the world, was coming into its own. Hou Hsiao-Hsien from Taiwan won the Golden Lion in Venice and the following year Zhang Yimou from China won the Golden Bear in Berlin. Clearly, the time had come to give Asian cinema the platform it lacked and the boost it so urgently needed.

As everywhere in the world, Asia's film industries cater overwhelmingly to a mass public. Yet, the concept of authorship has survived, and survived forcefully. In Asia, authors who assert their style and individuality have had to contend with very real questions of history, culture and aesthetics, questions thrown up by the struggle of ancient civilizations as they come to terms with notions of modernity. This is where Asia's cinemas offer their own perspectives, their own world view, in which the individual may not necessarily be the central figure, but rather a part of the family, community or social fabric. Long confined to definitions of cinema laid down by the West where it was born, filmmakers in Asia have searched for a different aesthetic to express their personal and civilizational concerns.

For the past fifteen years, films from Asia have figured regularly on the awards list of international festivals. But awards, well merited though they are, tell only part of the story. Beneath them are a host of creative and talented people involved in shaping a sensibility, conveying an emotion or denoting a concern special to their culture and their life.

For all that, the question still persists: can we speak of any common ground for Asian cinema when the countries themselves are so different? Is there any skein that binds them together? Bangladesh director Tanvir Mohammad attempted an answer to this ticklish question. The chief commonality, he believes, is one of community. Many countries of the region, he says, which are in the process of piecing themselves together after a debilitating colonial experience or conditions of war, are still defined through a strong sense of community and family values. "I get my answer when I see so much rural space and so many family stories in our films. We also pace films differently ... time still passes so slowly in our countrysides."

At the same time, to say that most Asian countries are in the vortex of change would be to state the obvious. Nations are in political and social turmoil; social and individual relationships are being irrevocably altered - for better or for worse; nostalgia for a more 'gentle', more 'tranquil', more 'meaningful' past goes hand in hand with a frenetic attempt to grapple with the compulsions and pace of modern times. Personal values no longer stand on stable ground, while the leaps of technology and the political arrangements of the 20th century have led to the questioning of revered institutions, to the fracturing of old values and to the transformation of mores and manners.

It is against this background of conflicts and reconciliations of the last hundred years that have coincided with the evolution of the cinematic art itself, of traditions spiritual and cultural distilled over millennia, that the cinemas of Asia - each with its own identity - find a common idiom.